So we don't pronounce the "l" for the same reason you don't seem to pronounce the "r" in soldier

Hmm, I guess. But we generally don't say a strong "R" on anything in the same way that Americans do. Its not so much that the R not said, its just not as distinguishable due to our accent.

That's true, but the American pronunciation of 'mirror' has always confused me, since the Rs are so strong over there and the middle ones seem not to be pronounced at all: to my British ears, I hear them saying 'Meer', where as here it would be 'Mi-ruh'.

The word sauna drives me batty. It's a Finnish word, and Finnish always has the emphasis on the first syllable. It also pronounces every letter in a word. So the correct way would be along the lines of SOU-na (like the first syllable of the word 'south'). I know the most common way to pronouce it in the States is SAW-na. If you say it like that in the part of Michigan I'm originally from, it definitely marks you as an outsider.

LOL!

I went to school in Marquette and was schooled on the correct way to pronounce that word. And now...everyone looks at me funny when I do.

But we generally don't say a strong "R" on anything in the same way that Americans do. Its not so much that the R not said, its just not as distinguishable due to our accent.

What you are talking about is whether your dialect of English is rhotic or non-rhotic. "Rhotic" comes from the Greek letter "rho" or R. Essentially, it has to do with how you treat "R" when it comes after a vowel. Do you pronounce it or do you use it as an indicator of how the vowel is sounded.

An easy way to tell if your accent is rhotic or non-rhotic is to say "father" and "farther." If you pronounced them the same, more or less like "fah-thah," then you are non-rhotic. If you say something like "fah-thurr" and "farr-thurr" you are rhotic.

Most Americans are rhotic; most speakers of British English are not.

This causes problems when people try to explain pronunciation when writing, without using IPA (international phonetic alphabet) which many people don't know.

I once saw information on Mexican food, written by someone in the UK, that suggested pronunciations like tarco and salsar. Looked pretty startling to me, but for a non-rhotic accent, the extra R tells you to say "tah-co" and "sahl-sah."

There is a local radio broadcaster, originally from Ireland, who says that a sponsoring restaurant sells "tack-os."

The word sauna drives me batty. It's a Finnish word, and Finnish always has the emphasis on the first syllable. It also pronounces every letter in a word. So the correct way would be along the lines of SOU-na (like the first syllable of the word 'south'). I know the most common way to pronouce it in the States is SAW-na. If you say it like that in the part of Michigan I'm originally from, it definitely marks you as an outsider.

I grew up in NW MI, under the bridge (AKA troll), and I'd forgotten about this. We did say it the way you did, but everywhere else I've lived it's been saw-na. I still say it closer to your way, even after all these years.

I live near NYC, and my friends here have a good laugh over how I say words. A good example is: Mary, marry, merry. I say them all the same. They say them differently.

My issue is that I have so many language influences. I was raised in the upper midwest, but by English Canadian parents. Then I married a guy from the south and lived there over 20 yrs. Now I live in the NE. I pick up a little bit from every place I live. And, interestingly, when I visited N. Ireland several years ago for some reason I slipped into the English Canadian accent without even thinking about it. Everyone there was convinced I was Canadian!

I have a lot of language pet peeves, but a big one is sherbet. I hear "sherbert" all the time (BTW, the spellcheck on this site tagged that as being misspelled). At my local ice cream place, it's spelled that way.